Friday, January 26, 2018

What Part of “Illegal” Doesn’t Donald Trump Understand?

Could Trump get perp-walked out of 1600 Pennsylvani Avenue?
Poor Stephen Miller. On January 25 he finally got to present his full anti-immigrant program as the nonnegotiable position of the U.S. executive branch—and suddenly his spot in the limelight was stolen by a New York Times report that yes, Donald Trump really had tried to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. People like Miller love the word “illegal,” at least when applied to people with dark skin. They fail to notice the irony that they are working for a man whose whole career has been based on breaking or circumventing laws—a career that started with violations of anti-discrimination laws and may end with an effort to get around the special counsel statute. So if 11 million people should be deported for “unlawful presence” in the U.S., what should we do about Donald Trump’s unlawful presence in the White House?—TPOI editor

The immigration deal Trump’s White House is floating, explained
1.8 million immigrants could ultimately get access to citizenship — but the White House wants big cuts to family-based immigration in return.

By Dara Lind, Vox
January 25, 2018
The Trump administration is finally playing ball on immigration.

On Wednesday, it announced it would release a “framework” for a bill it hoped to see pass Congress. On Thursday, details of that framework leaked to several news outlets, including NBC and the Daily Beast.

Those reports say that the administration is willing to allow 1.8 million unauthorized immigrants who came to the country as children to become legal residents and ultimately apply for US citizenship — including the 690,000 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as well as others who would have been eligible for DACA but did not apply — in exchange for a $25 billion fund for its wall on the US/Mexico border; reallocating slots currently given to immigrants via the diversity visa lottery on the basis of “merit”; and preventing people from sponsoring their parents, adult children, or siblings to immigrate to the US.[…]

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Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, New York Times
January 25, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.[…]

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